The best CompTIA A+ book for the current exams costs about $25 right now, and its previous edition, written for the retired exams, sits a dollar below it. Sybex’s sixth-edition Complete Study Guide, written for 220-1201 and 220-1202, fell from $45.00 at the end of August to $25.24. Price no longer warns you off the fifth edition beside it. The other name every A+ candidate meets, Mike Meyers’ All-in-One, still is not on Amazon for the current codes. Total Seminars is taking preorders for its twelfth edition and says it ships in December 2026.
Below are the six A+ study guides, question banks and textbooks worth buying for the V15 exams, what moved in CompTIA’s objectives, and the older books you’ll still meet first. Every price, rating and stock level was re-checked against Amazon US and the publishers’ own stores in October 2026.
Choose an A+ Book by How You Study
Most candidates need one study guide and one question bank, so start with the first two lines and only add the others when you know why you need them:
- One book for both exams: CompTIA A+ Complete Study Guide, 6th Edition
- Checking you’re ready to book: CompTIA A+ Complete Practice Tests, 4th Edition
- The last two weeks before the exam: CompTIA A+ Complete Review Guide, 6th Edition
- Short books, one per exam: CompTIA A+ CertMike, 2nd Edition
- A second explanation from another publisher: A+ Core 1 and Core 2 Exam Cram, 2nd Edition
- Classroom course with labs: Complete A+ Guide to IT Hardware and Software, 10th Edition
The study guide plus the practice tests come to about $48 today and cover both exams, which is about $30 less than Sybex’s boxed kit that adds the review guide. That pair is the default unless one of the trade-offs in the picks below applies to you.
Check the Exam Codes on the Cover
Read the codes on the cover before you read the reviews. CompTIA launched A+ V15 on 25 March 2025 as 220-1201 and 220-1202, and its certification pages list no other version. The V14 exam URLs redirect to their V15 equivalents, so the retired codes no longer have an exam page of their own.
The two halves aren’t interchangeable, and the pass mark is not the same number on both:
| Detail | Core 1 (220-1201) | Core 2 (220-1202) |
|---|---|---|
| Questions | Maximum 90 | Maximum 90 |
| Time | 90 minutes | 90 minutes |
| Passing score | 675 of 900 | 700 of 900 |
| Domains | 5 | 4 |
| Launched | 25 March 2025 | 25 March 2025 |
Don’t read the 675 and the 700 as difficulty. Scaled scores come out of separate equating runs for each exam, so 700 on Core 2 does not necessarily mean more correct answers than 675 on Core 1. The rule worth acting on is a different one: CompTIA states that Core 1 and Core 2 must be taken from the same version, with no mixing allowed. If you passed one half on the retired codes and never sat the other, that rule means the lone pass can’t pair with a V15 exam, so you’ll be sitting both 220-1201 and 220-1202.
CompTIA puts V15’s expected retirement at 2028, three years after launch, which leaves well over a year of runway on anything you buy now. That is a far easier position than CySA+ book buyers are in this year, with CS0-003 retiring in December.
See What Moved Between the Two Versions
The left column is the weighting CompTIA gave each domain in the retired version, from its own December 2024 explainer. The right column is what its Core 1 and Core 2 pages carry today.
| Domain | Old (220-1101/1102) | Current (220-1201/1202) | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mobile devices (Core 1) | 15% | 13% | down 2 |
| Networking (Core 1) | 20% | 23% | up 3 |
| Hardware (Core 1) | 25% | 25% | no change |
| Virtualization and cloud (Core 1) | 11% | 11% | no change |
| Hardware and network troubleshooting (Core 1) | 29% | 28% | down 1 |
| Operating systems (Core 2) | 31% | 28% | down 3 |
| Security (Core 2) | 25% | 28% | up 3 |
| Software troubleshooting (Core 2) | 22% | 23% | up 1 |
| Operational procedures (Core 2) | 22% | 21% | down 1 |
Three domains moved by a full three points, and two of them are in Core 2. Operating systems used to lead security by six points there. They’re now tied at 28% each, so the half of A+ that people think of as the Windows exam is just as much a security exam. Networking picked up the other three points, over in Core 1.
Percentages are only half the story. CompTIA rewrote the objective statements underneath them even where the headline number held, so a book built for the retired codes is out of date in ways this table can’t show you. Treat it as evidence that the exam moved, not as a map of how much of your old book survives.
How We Picked the Six
A book made the list only if its cover, its ISBN and the publisher’s own page all name 220-1201 and 220-1202 (or V15), and it is sold new on Amazon US today. Amazon’s web search is a poor census of what’s in print, so the shortlist came from the publishers’ catalogs instead: Wiley for Sybex, InformIT for Pearson, and Total Seminars for the All-in-One line. That pass found seven current-code print titles from Sybex and Pearson. The six below are all of them, with the two CertMike volumes treated as one pick.
What got left out, and why:
- books printed for 220-1101 and 220-1102, however well reviewed
- the Meyers All-in-One twelfth edition, which is not shipping yet
- self-published A+ titles with no publisher page to check against
- Sybex’s Certification Kit, which costs more than its own contents
Star ratings and review counts were read off the live Amazon listings, because the catalog API does not return them. Where a book has fewer than 20 ratings, the pick says so rather than leaning on the average.
Compare the Current A+ Books
The first seven rows are the current-code books. The last three are retired-code books still on sale, and they’re the ones a shopper tends to meet first, because they’ve had years to collect reviews.
| Book | Codes | Published | Pages | Rating | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A+ Complete Study Guide, 6th (Sybex) | 220-1201 / 1202 | Jul 2025 | 1,920 | 4.6 (198) | about $25 |
| A+ Complete Practice Tests, 4th (Sybex) | 220-1201 / 1202 | Aug 2025 | 736 | 3.8 (14) | about $23 |
| A+ Complete Review Guide, 6th (Sybex) | 220-1201 / 1202 | Aug 2025 | 704 | 4.3 (22) | about $18 |
| A+ CertMike Core 1, 2nd (Sybex) | 220-1201 | Sep 2025 | 464 | 5.0 (1) | about $24 |
| A+ CertMike Core 2, 2nd (Sybex) | 220-1202 | Sep 2025 | 688 | none yet | about $25 |
| A+ Core 1 and Core 2 Exam Cram, 2nd (Pearson) | 220-1201 / 1202 | Sep 2025 | 1,216 | 4.3 (18) | about $47 |
| Complete A+ Guide to IT Hardware and Software, 10th (Pearson) | V15 | Aug 2025 | 1,104 | 5.0 (1) | about $125 |
| A+ Complete Study Guide, 5th (Sybex) | 220-1101 / 1102 | May 2022 | 1,744 | 4.6 (928) | about $24 |
| A+ All-in-One, 11th (McGraw Hill) | 220-1101 / 1102 | Jan 2023 | 1,472 | 4.7 (1,232) | about $38 |
| A+ Cert Guide, 1st (Pearson) | 220-1101 / 1102 | Oct 2022 | 912 | 4.3 (15) | about $60 |
The worst trap on that list is the fifth edition of the book at the top of it. Docter and Buhagiar’s previous Complete Study Guide sells for $24.17, about a dollar under the current edition, with 928 ratings against the sixth edition’s 198 and the same 4.6 average. It’s the same authors, the same series and the same cover styling. What differs is the exam codes, the edition number and the format: the fifth edition is one 1,744-page volume, while the sixth is a two-volume set of 1,920 pages. With nearly five times the ratings at a lower price, the old edition looks like the safer buy of the two, so check the codes before you add it to the cart.
Mike Meyers’ All-in-One works on you the same way. It has more than six times the sixth edition’s ratings because it went on sale in January 2023, two and a half years before the Sybex guide. It is still the 220-1101 and 220-1102 edition. Sales rank tells the real story for that pairing: on the day we checked, the current Sybex guide sat at #8,203 in Books against the All-in-One’s #41,137. Every other Sybex or Pearson current-code title ranks below both, which is what a thin, new shelf looks like.
On Amazon, Pearson’s retired book costs more than its current one. The Cert Guide from October 2022 sells there at $59.99 against $46.88 for the Exam Cram written for the current codes, thirteen dollars more for exams nobody can sit any more. Pearson’s own store sells both at the same $47.99, so nothing about the price tells you which is which.
Sybex also sells a Certification Kit that bundles its study guide, review guide and practice tests. On Amazon it is $77.58, against $65.43 for the same three bought separately on the same day, so the kit costs $12.15 more than its own contents. Wiley lists the kit at $120.00 against $145.00 for the three components at list price, which is a real discount on Wiley’s store and none at all on Amazon. Buy the three individually unless the kit drops below their combined price.
1. CompTIA A+ Complete Study Guide, Sixth Edition
The default choice, and for most candidates the only book that’s strictly necessary. Quentin Docter and Jon Buhagiar split it into two physical volumes, one per exam. Sybex shipped it 113 days after V15 launched, ahead of every other Sybex or Pearson book on the current codes.
The two-volume format matters more than it sounds. A+ is two separate exams, and studying Core 1 from a volume that holds only Core 1 beats hauling a 1,920-page brick around. Volume 1 is Core 1, volume 2 is Core 2, and both covers carry their exam code, so you can’t open the wrong one by accident.
Registration gets you the Sybex online test bank, which the cover puts at four custom practice exams, 200 electronic flashcards and a searchable glossary. The cover also says one year of free access after activation, so the clock starts when you activate rather than when the book arrives. Leave it alone until you are actually studying.
The price is the news here. Amazon had it at $45.00 on 31 August and at $25.24 on 21 October, 61% under its $65.00 list. It now costs about the same as the 736-page practice tests that go with it. A price that moved $19.76 in seven weeks can move back just as fast, so check it on the day you order.
Look elsewhere if you want one volume you can read cover to cover, or if 1,920 pages is more than you’ll realistically get through. With 198 ratings it’s also the only one of the six picks with enough reviews to mean much. Check the current price on Amazon.
2. CompTIA A+ Complete Practice Tests, Fourth Edition
Audrey O’Shea’s question bank carries the lowest average rating of any book on this list, and it’s still the one that tells you whether you’re ready to book the exam.
Wiley’s table of contents shows how it is built. Part I runs the five Core 1 domains across pages 1 to 156 and Part II the four Core 2 domains from 157 to 348. Then come two full practice exams, one per code. The cover claims over 1,000 questions. The answers appendix runs from page 393 to the index at 641, which is 248 pages or about a third of the book. Those explanations are long enough to teach from when you get one wrong.
Be honest about that 3.8 average. It comes from 14 ratings on a book published in August 2025, which is far too few to draw a conclusion from in either direction. When we first checked at the end of August it stood at 3.5 on 12 ratings. Some early buyers were unhappy. That’s all the number establishes.
Hold off if you have not finished a study guide yet, or if the study guide’s own test bank is still throwing questions you have not seen. At around $23 it’s cheap enough to add late rather than up front. Check the current price on Amazon.
3. CompTIA A+ Complete Review Guide, Sixth Edition
Troy McMillan’s review guide is not a second study guide. It walks the objectives in order and asks whether you know each one, which is a different job from teaching them.
At 704 pages across both exams it’s roughly a third of the study guide’s length, which is the point. Used properly it is the book you open in the last fortnight, working the objective list until nothing on it makes you hesitate. Used as your only book it’s a study guide with the explanations taken out, and people who buy it that way find out late.
Before you buy both, notice that the review guide advertises the same online extras as the study guide: four custom practice exams and 200 flashcards. If your budget is tight, buy the study guide first and see whether its bank is enough before adding this one.
Wrong first book: buy it only after you’ve worked through a full study guide. Its 4.3 average comes from 22 ratings, so read it as thin evidence rather than a verdict, and Amazon showed only six copies left when we checked. At around $18 it’s the cheapest of the six here. Check the current price on Amazon.
4. CompTIA A+ CertMike, Second Edition
Mike Chapple, who writes Sybex’s Security+ and CISSP guides, covers each exam in its own shorter book built around a prepare, practice, pass loop per objective. It is also one of the titles Amazon’s search for the new codes does not put in front of you.
They sell separately: Core 1 (220-1201) runs 464 pages at around $24, and Core 2 (220-1202) runs 688 pages at around $25. Wiley lists each at $50.00, so Amazon is running both at about half of list. Stock is thin on both (three copies of Core 1 and ten of Core 2 when we checked), so check availability rather than assuming the price holds.
Run the arithmetic before you assume the shorter books are the cheaper route, because the study guide’s price cut flipped it. The pair comes to $48.50 for 1,152 pages against $25.24 for the study guide’s 1,920, so you pay $23.26 more for 768 fewer pages. That trade only makes sense if a 1,920-page set is what would stop you finishing.
Pass on the pair if you want depth on hardware, or if you want reviews to lean on. Core 1 has a single rating and Core 2 has none, so there’s no useful signal there yet either way.
5. CompTIA A+ Core 1 and Core 2 Exam Cram, Second Edition
The Pearson option, and the one to reach for if you want a second explanation of something the Sybex book did not land. David Bayne, Mark Smith and John Pickard wrote it, and Pearson published it on 21 September 2025.
Despite the Exam Cram name it runs 1,216 pages, so this is a full study guide with cram furniture attached: Exam Alerts through the chapters, a last-minute CramSheet, and Pearson Test Prep software carrying four complete exams. Pearson lists the print edition at $59.99 on its own store and sells it there for $47.99, which puts Amazon’s $46.88 about a dollar under the publisher.
One detail says a lot about the state of the A+ shelf. The description Pearson runs on its own product page for this second edition still opens by calling it the 220-1101 and 220-1102 Exam Cram, more than a year after publication. The title, the ISBN, the cover and the contents are all on 220-1201 and 220-1202, and only the marketing copy was left behind. Check the codes on the cover art before you order, whichever retailer you use.
Skip it if you already own the Sybex study guide, because buying both is 3,136 pages covering the same nine domains. At around $47 it’s the most expensive single volume among the picks except the Pearson textbook below. Check the current price on Amazon.
6. Complete A+ Guide to IT Hardware and Software
Cheryl Schmidt and Christopher Lee wrote the classroom textbook, not an exam crammer. Pearson published the tenth edition on 25 August 2025, 153 days after V15 launched and four weeks ahead of its own Exam Cram.
It’s also the only A+ cover here that names the version rather than the codes, printing “Core 1 and Core 2 Exams (V15)” on the front. CompTIA’s own pages label the exams V15 as well as by code, so that wording matches what you’ll see there. Pearson’s store page lists a free online companion lab manual with more than 140 hands-on labs.
The price is where the reasoning has to happen. Amazon has it at $125.00 for 1,104 pages, about five times the Sybex study guide. Pearson’s own store sells the same print book for $106.25, so buy it there if you buy it at all. It earns its place if you learn better from a course text with labs than from an objective-mapped exam guide, or if you’re teaching the material.
Not worth it if your goal is only to pass, which for most readers it is. It has a single rating so far, and Amazon showed two copies left. Check the current price on Amazon.
Read Old A+ Books for Background Only
If the All-in-One is already on your shelf, don’t throw it out and don’t study for the exam from it. We checked every Mike Meyers A+ title on Amazon, and each one carries 220-1101 and 220-1102 or older codes:
- the All-in-One, eleventh edition
- the Guide to Managing and Troubleshooting PCs and its lab manual
- the Core 1 and Core 2 Passports
The current-code All-in-One is coming, but not from McGraw Hill. Total Seminars, which already moved the Network+ All-in-One to its own imprint in March 2026, is taking preorders for the A+ twelfth edition and says it ships in December 2026. Glen E. Clarke and Edward Tetz wrote it, with Meyers as series editor, across 29 chapters.
That matters for timing. Nineteen months after the codes launched, the Sybex study guide is the established book with a deep discount, and the new All-in-One will arrive with no reviews, on preorder today only from Total Seminars. If your exam is before the new year, buy from the six above. If you’re booking for spring and you learned from Meyers’ videos, waiting for the twelfth edition is reasonable, but nobody can review it until it ships.
What an old book is still good for is background reading. Two Core 1 domains kept their exact weighting through the version change, hardware at 25% and virtualization and cloud at 11%, and power supplies, connectors, RAM and storage did not change because a code did. The caveat above still applies to both, though: CompTIA rewrote the objective statements even where the percentage held, so an unchanged weighting is not an unchanged syllabus. Read the old book to understand how the hardware works, then work the objectives from a book with 220-1201 on the cover.
Professor Messer also sells V15 course notes and practice exams directly on Amazon, which suit you if you already follow his video course. Once A+ is done, the usual next steps are Network+ books or Security+ study guides, and if the Core 2 Linux material caught your interest, the Linux+ books pick that thread up properly. If you’re weighing the networking route against Cisco, we compared CCNA against Network+ separately.
